~ Musings on weather and science

A Very Different Week Ahead…And Why We Can’t (always) Get it Right (Pt. 1)

This week’s weather will be a world apart from last week’s. A weak low pressure system just off the Pacific Northwest coastline will keep us in a stable southwesterly flow, which means at most a few clouds and some moderate afternoon breezes. Temperatures will be slightly below average, topping out in the upper 80s Tuesday before bumping back up to a more seasonable low 90s midweek. Highs will fall back into the upper 80s as we head into the weekend with only a slight chance of an afternoon thunderstorm Saturday.

I get a lot of questions here in this job. One of the toughest to answer is along the lines of this one: “In a nutshell, why is predicting the weather so hard? Using a computer, and measuring the temperature and currents of the ocean, the jet stream, and knowing how cloud cover will cool the surface terrain and waters, how come the computer can’t know with 100% certainty what the weather will be? Where does the randomness come from?”

Seems like it should be easy, shouldn’t it? But as with most things, there’s a lot more to the story. I’ll continue tomorrow.